A wide and growing variety of electrical devices are designed to operate using rechargeable batteries, and operate and recharge their batteries by means of a connection to an adapter that converts high-voltage AC electricity available, for example, from a wall outlet in the home, into the low-voltage DC electricity and appropriate amperage necessary to operate and recharge these devices. Each of these devices is manufactured to precise specifications requiring specific voltages and amperages and for this reason the manufacturers of the devices generally include with such devices a specialized adapter. To avoid mismatching of the devices with the adapters, the manufacturers fit each adapter with a unique connection output end and each device with a matching receptacle capable of receiving only the matched adapter. The use of an improper adapter may damage the rechargeable device and may also void the manufacturer's warranties.
Generally, the adapters are required only when the batteries of the rechargeable devices run low. Therefore, for much of the time the adapter must be stored. Moreover, to accommodate various potential placements of the adapter/rechargeable device combination, the wires used by the adapters tend to be quite long, often significantly in excess of that actually needed. Also, because many of the rechargeable devices are mobile, such as mobile telephones, pagers or wireless e-mail units, it is advantageous if the consumer can easily remove the adapter from its storage/use location when needed for travel.
It is not uncommon for a contemporary household to own ten or more rechargeable devices, and therefore, ten or more unique adapters. The existing options for storing these adapters is inadequate. If a consumer is somewhat organized he or she may centralize the location of these adapters, for example in a drawer. This, however, leads to the familiar “rat's-nest” of wires and plugs.
Moreover, manufacturer's often do not place identifying markers on the adapters, so this “organized” consumer must still tangle with the wires and struggle to identify the appropriate adapter for a particular device. Additionally, with so many rechargeable devices, it may be difficult to locate a sufficient number of convenient electric wall outlets to permit the consumer to charge multiple devices simultaneously. This situation can result in wires being strung throughout the home, with exposed wires lying in the open creating the potential that the rechargeable device will be damaged, for example if the wire is pulled and the device falls. In addition, the situation may present a potentially dangerous electrical hazard.
Attempts have been made to ease some of the above-noted problems. However, the existing options, such as they are, typically only deal with one of the number of problems previously identified.
For example, power strip devices, which provide multiple inline AC outlets, are readily available. However, among other shortcomings, power strips do not solve the above-noted problems relating to the excess wire, the storage of the adapters when the adapters are not in use, or the easy organization of the adapters for travel.
Twist-ties and similar devices are known and are used to store and organize the excess cable. However, the wire loops created by bunching up the wires in this fashion are almost as problematic as the fully extended wires and this solution does nothing with respect to any of the other problems associated by these adapters.
Recently, the so-called “Power Station” has been introduced. The Power Station attempts to address the problems discussed above. However, the Power Station also fails to address the majority of the problems addressed by the present invention. This device is essentially an enclosure for a power strip. The connection end of the adapter remains always exposed and there is no means to lengthen and retract this end of the adapter. Also, the unit can accommodate only three adapters and as designed the unit is incapable of dealing with large “in line” adapters such as those used by portable camcorders and lap-top computers. Moreover, this product does not provide adequate space for more cumbersome devices, such as portable DVD players and camcorders, to rest during the charging process. Finally, this device relies only on the twist-tie wire organization method, which as noted above is inadequate.
Other prior art devices in this area focus on the “wire-is-too-long” problem and incorporate wire retraction devices to deal with this problem. However, such devices have approached solving this problem by creating new adapter designs, rather than utilize the adapters provided by the manufacturer.
Other attempts at a solution only replace one adapter with another, and those that constitute a replacement “universal” adapter have significant shortcomings. First, the use of such replacement adapters may damage the rechargeable devices and may actually void the manufacturer's warranty. Second, the use of such a device requires the user to continuously substitute connection ends to fit the various rechargeable devices and to make other adjustments, e.g., to voltage/current settings, so the output of the adapter matches the requirements of the rechargeable device. Finally, such attempts at a solution do not deal with the problems relating to the distribution of electricity described above.